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Jolly GiantsBy Lee MarcussenReviewed on Xbox OneReleased on October 10th on Xbox One and PS4, also available on PCDeveloper:SOEDESCO Publishing Publisher:SOEDESCO Publishing

It’s not easy being a giant with the power to shape the Earth to the needs of humans. Humans, blargh! They’re so puny and needy. You have to constantly provide resources for them to survive. You have to make them plants and animals to eat, minerals for their science-y stuff. The worst part of it is that they don’t listen to you at all! Not a single word! And heed my warning new guy, if you give them too much, they become way too greedy and start acting crazy. This is what you will have to deal with once you load up Reus and take control of one of the powerful giants at your disposal. Ah well, at least if things get too far out of hand, you could always squish them!​Reus is a game where you control powerful giants that represent different biomes of the Earth. You use these giants to help you shape the planet to your liking. You can create deserts, mountains, swamps, forests and oceans. The giants also have special abilities to make a planet with plants, minerals and animal life. You control all aspects of the planet Earth besides Earth’s inhabitants, the humans! You try to build the planet to help cater to the needs of the humans, which includes food, water, science, and minerals. The only issue with building the planet for them is that they get greedy and try to attack other civilizations. It is of course, in our nature.

The gameplay is very simple. Using menus along the border of the play screen you can switch between giants and select their different special abilities. Each Giant has the power to make their style biome. For example; the rock giant can make mountains and the forest giant can make forests. Included with this they have other powers to make food resources like plants for vegetables and fruit to plots of chicken or wild game for food. Similarly, other giants can make different resources such as minerals or gold to spaces of science to help grow the human’s knowledge. Once your giants have helped a group of humans, you then gain the leader’s ability to create symbiotic relationships in your environment, like wild animals and plants on one space which gives double food. The humans will want to build different buildings like a library, school, or grainer these increase the human’s populations. If you end up making the humans too greedy they will attack the others. Each giant has a sort of attack simulated by a natural disaster which will stop the greedy humans.

Overall, Reus is a joyful god game. You have the control of the whole planet, how it’s all formed, and you have the ability destroy the humans whenever you want. The controls are easy to use and they have helpful collapsible info screens to explain each giant’s powers. The giants themselves are very slow, probably from them being so massive, which makes getting from one side of the planet to the other a challenge. I found there to be sort of a delay between your giant making the resources and your humans finding them starting to harvesting them for their projects. The problem I had getting used to is not being able to control the humans directly, only guide them through the placement of resources to provide them the resources to become better. Overall Reus is a solid game that provides you the ability to play as a god and build the Earth the way you want to serve the humans. If you enjoy games that let you control the major aspects, you’ll enjoy Reus, or if you like biology and understand the different biomes as well the symbiotic relationships between animals and plants this is a very solid game.